The Ghost Bride (submit your own character)
by hereliethorns
Summary: In Russia, there are two kings - tsar of life and tsar of death, brothers preparing to face one another in civil war. But the king of the underworld requires a living queen, and it is up to the Tsar of Life to find her by organising the Selection. Fifteen girls will enter the Winter Palace, vying for the heart of a dead man, while the Tsar of Life finds love of his own. SYOC, 1/15
1. Chapter 1

Let us delve into hell.

How far down do you suppose we'll have to go?

To the very roots, to the very bottom, where all the shadows lie.

Dive deep with me, my darling.

* * *

"Tsesarevich."

"Good morning, Ksyusha." The crown prince was night-ruffled and bare-chested, one arm resting on the tousled blankets just vacated by the prima ballerina of the Legat Company, eyes half-lidded with sleep and drunkenness. "Cold night, was it?"

"As usual, Tsesarevich," Ksenija replied. "No colder." Her collar was dusted with snow, her boots tough with frost, her dark hair laced with melting flakes.

"Breakfast..."

"On its way with one of the footmen, Your Imperial Highness."

"And Miss Vaganova..."

"Shown to the gate around dawn this morning, Your Imperial Highness."

"Ksenija Vladimirovna," the prince said. "You are the finest bodyguard I have ever had the pleasure to employ."

She had to chuckle at that, just under her breath. "You must have a poor taste in bodyguards, Your Imperial Highness."

He turned his head to glance at the mahogany and gold half-grandfather clock which hung on the wall beside his bed, tick-tocking the time away, and said, "Eight o'clock. May I enquire..."

"Zagreus is here, Your Imperial Majesty."

He sat up abruptly, all traces of hedonism and sloth vanished in an was like polished silver, sharpened steel, in that manner. You didn't quite notice how keen he was until it was tested against the flesh.

"Here? Now?"

"Waiting outside. She says that prefers not to enter the tsar's territory."

"Then she ought not have entered the kingdom," the crown prince murmured, before nodding. "I thank you, Ksenija Vladimirovna. I suppose we should hasten."

"We should," the bodyguard agreed. "Hasten, I should say."

He grinned, all sharp canines and laugh lines around the edges of his dark eyes, and rolled from bed as Kseniya turned aside to gaze at the red and green onion domes which studded the skyline to the east of the winter palace, light glittering off the frost and snow that illustrated the windows and paths. She could see smoke rising from some of the grey apartment blocks which had slowly risen to obscure the horizon like a developing mould, and wondered who was cooking breakfast and what they would eat, whether the children had left for school yet and what time the parents would be home from work to hug and kiss them again. Ksenija often wondered about these things - too often for her own good, she thought. It didn't do to try and inhabit the bones of others before they were even dead.

When she turned back, the crown prince was adjusting his cuffs as though pondering cufflinks and eyeing his hair in the mirror.

"Do you think," he began, and caught sight of Ksenija's shaking head before he could finish.

"The _vědma_ deals with corpses and corses the day long, Tsesarevich. You'll look radiant in comparison."

"Radiant," he said, with quirked lips. "I don't dislike it."

"Are you ready, Your Imperial Highness?"

"Near enough, Ksenija Vladimirovna, near enough."

She opened the door and he, after a pause, moved through it. The corridors were empty, as they usually were; the halls were wide and bright with pale wan light from the early morning streaming through the artisan dyed windows. Ksenija moved a few steps behind him at all times, her eyes scanning the empty space almost as a matter of habit rather than strategy, her gaze dropping down to watch the slightly out-of-rhythm pace of the crown prince's movement. He moved quickly despite the childhood limp, and soon they were moving down the Stasov staircase the crown prince lightly touching his fingertips against the gilt bronze handrails and tracing his path down the steps as Ksenija avoided the empty alabaster eyes of the statues which lined the foyer they crossed with the haste of a pair emerging from hell with the devil himself dogging their doorsteps.

Zagreus was waiting by the edge of the palace grounds, at the very edge of the graves that belonged to all the tsars and tsarinas who had come before and fallen to the cold stiletto of death. She was small and blonde, hollow-cheeked and full-lipped, a wisp of a girl, a ghost inhabiting an empty skeleton.

"Good morning, Your Imperial Highness," Zagreus said. Her voice was soft, very soft, too soft. "I am sorry to intrude."

"Worry not, _vědma_." The crown prince did not smile. "You are never an intrusion."

Zagreus turned her pale gaze to the bodyguard. "Comrade."

"Citizen," Ksenija replied in a drawl.

"What news?" the crown prince interrupts, his tone strict, harsh despite the musical lilt of his voice. He is keen, Ksenija can tell - eager for information from the other world.

"Your brother grows hungry," Zagreus replied. "That much you will know. His Imperial Highness has not spoken of it, but I know the thought of the Selection occurs to him."

The prince's expression did not change - only one who knew him as well as Ksenija did would detect the flicker in his pupil, the slight movement of his weaker leg, the angle at which he set his head as he considered the blonde girl.

"There must be balance," Zagreus said simply. "Now..."

"And Anastasia?"

"I have not found her," she said. "I have not found her yet. More time, your Imperial Highness, please. More time."

"Don't allow me to rush you," the crown prince said. He stood within the palace threshold, Zagreus without, and Ksenija watched them closely to ensure the _vědma_ did not grab him or attempt to pull him over the line in the snow where the guards had paced their march in the night. "And give my brother my best wishes. Tell him I shall... endeavour to begin the Selection."

Zagreus nodded. She put her hands into the pockets of her hoody, looking cold enough that Ksenija supposed she rather regretted wearing jeans with threadbare holes in the knees and a t-shirt which showed her collarbones and sternum, the hard lines of the skeleton visible through her pallid skin. "Thank you, your Imperial Highness."

"You must be tired," the crown prince said. "After your long journey. We will speak of this later."

The witch-girl did not move away, but turned her attention back to the graves of the prince's parents as Ksenija guided her charge away from the high walls of the palace. "Do you know what I am thinking, Ksyusha?"

"That your brother prefers brunettes?"

That caught him by surprise; his dark eyes flashed with humour. " _Nyet._ If he is truly thinking of the Selection, then he has resigned himself to his realm. Perhaps we shall avoid war after all."

"Perhaps," Ksenija agreed. "Perhaps."

She did not tend to be the optimistic sort. Viktor was not his rogueish, good-natured brother. The Tsar of Death was as unpredictable and hostile as the Tsar of Life was charming and magnanimous.

"Well," Gavril said. They reached the top of the steps and turned to look back at the smoky edge of the city. "Hope springs eternal."

* * *

The Russian Tsardom stretches its grip from as far west as Berlin, as far east as the border of China, north to the vast expanses of the taiga, and south to Turkey. It has, for many years, retreated from the world in which New Asia, Swendway and Illea deal disaster and destruction, operating an isolationist policy which rendered them a hermit kingdom while they dealt with the burgeoning civil war within their own borders.

But the Winter War is not a conflict between religions, between races, between political ideologies, but between life and death itself. For as long as the Tsardom has stood, there have been two Tsars - Tsar of Life and Tsar of Death, siblings, one granted dominion over the living of Russia and one relegated to the underworld to rule their dead.

Historically, the Tsar of Death has always chosen a wife from among the living, typically after a Selection co-ordinated by his brother to find the best candidate, while the Tsar of Life is free to find his own queen as he pleases - although often after getting to know the girls of the Selection, he finds love amongst them.

Also, amongst the population,there are some known as _vědma,_ witches, who possess a link to the underworld and through that can channel magic. For example, Zagreus, seen in this chapter, is a _vědma_ ofbone who can communicate with the dead through rituals. This magic is thought of as superstition outside of Russia, but acknowleged in the Tsardom as real. Some are powerful, some less so, and the most useful are employed by the palace.

* * *

 **Please PM this form to me to submit your character! The only guidelines are these: the more detail, the better, and if you review then your character shall be looked upon far more favourably!**

Name:

Age:

Hometown:

Occupation:

Are they a witch? If so, what do they do?;

Detailed Personality:

Detailed Appearance:

Face Claim:

History:

Important Relationships:

Skills:

Fatal flaw:

Why did she join the Selection?:

Why should she be the one to win?:

Opinion of the Tsar of Life, Gavril:

Opinion of the Tsar of Death, Viktor:

Other:


	2. Chapter 2

In the autumn, they had planted xeranthemum and roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also, and hyacinths and the narcissus, growing yellow as a crocus, and for a time she had watched them from the shade of the pomegranate tree with eyes like a northern viper, waiting to see if they would flourish. He had warned her not to take it as any kind of an omen, but in the deathless realm one had to scrabble for some meaning beyond that which was apparent: you are dead. If flowers could grow here, there was hope.

But they withered. Their roots shrivelled and grew black, petals wilting from their stems at the merest touch of her fingertips, the colour draining from them as blood from a cooling corpse. They died in their multitudes, lost in swathes as though to the scythe of a reaper, so Zhivka the handmaiden tore them all up again in fistfuls and left them to rot beneath the pomegranate tree. When next she saw Viktor, in the long throne room vaulted by the roots of an enormous tree, the ceiling lost miles above to shadows and the nests of bats, she had put a bouquet long grass stems, dried and yellow as the scrubland of a desert, into a glass vase and was observing it mutinously.

"I won't ask," Viktor said and Zhivka said nothing while she continued silently to arrange the harsh thistles, her hands raw from pulling thorns. At the head of the room stood an inordinately ornate throne, carved as though from onyx and jet and other precious materials of the earth and hemmed in pearls, but the prince had eschewed a place on the throne in favour of a seat on the steps. For all that, he did not look in any way astray - he was, as ever, perfect. Not a strand of hair misplaced. He watched her as she worked, a silence between them that did not ask to be broken, and for a moment the quiet of death rushed back in to envelop the hall.

"I am summoned to face the sun," Viktor said abruptly, and the handmaiden noticed for the first time the envelope in his hand.

Zhivka picked up a withered grey rose and began to strip the thorns from it with a small, sharp paring knife, etched in Cyrillic characters that marked it as one that had belonged to some Tsarist soldier, fallen where he fought. "You rather make it sound a chore, Vitya."

"I don't intend to." He made a sound under his breath and stretched his legs long across the steps. He was wearing a nice coat, the kind he wore when he went visiting beyond his realm. He did not often wear that coat. Zhivka set down the knife. "An unwelcome reminder, perhaps."

She withdrew a nettle from the bunch and proffered it to him, holding it at arms length, her dark eyes without humour; after a silence he rose and walked a few steps to take it from her, the sound of his shoes a metronome in the hollowed echo chamber of the throne room.

"A drink, Zhivka, if you please."

He turned the stinging nettle over in his hand, seemingly ignorant of the prick of stinging hairs against his flesh as Zhivka continued to silently rearrange the extempore bouquet. She pushed it into the centre of the table, and in the same motion, reached for the pitcher of wine at the side. She poured it without flourish; Viktor lightly touched at the lyme-grass and wind-grass, the withered gentian and ferns, the stinging nettles and gorse with which the handmaiden had made up the bunch.

"Drinking this early in the morning," Zhivka murmured. She handed him the glass, and straightened the wine with a flick of her wrist. "I hate to think of what marriage will do to you, Vitya."

"Is it morning? I couldn't tell. You were betrothed, weren't you, Zhitiye?"

A pause, one she left longer than she should have. Small creatures, spiders and moths, stirred within her hair. She turned so that she leaned against the table to consider her tsar from a side profile. He wore his hair like his father's, slicked back.

"I left a widower," she said quietly. "If that's what you mean."

"Handsome man," Viktor said. "I suppose, for a girl like you."

 _A girl like you._ A dead girl, a strangled girl, a starved girl with phantom burns and water in her lungs even now. The underworld was full of girls like her.

"He was prematurely grey," she said darkly. "His hair made him look older. And he wasn't young to begin with."

When he half-smiled in response, she looked glad. It was a difficult thing to serve an austere king, and if Zhivka had ever had a sense of humour, it had died along with her living self, so she rarely was capable of provoking him into mirth. She waved the wine pitcher at him and he drained his glass to accept a refill.

"He was kind," she added, for fear her tsar might think otherwise. "I wouldn't have agreed to take his ring otherwise. I was fortunate, I suppose."

"I find there's more kind in the world than unkind, _dorogaya_."

Viktor put the empty envelope on the table, where it lay like the shed skin of a snake, green ink gleaming. She half-expected it to start smoking.

"He'll be expecting you," Zhivka said dryly. Her master's brother so rarely gave much notice when he demanded parlay - an hour, two hours, less.

"Why do you think I'm drinking?"

She tipped the bottle again, and watched the dark wine swirl, but rather than taking a drink, Viktor offered the glass to her.

The handmaiden raised her hands, scratched by the thorns and nettles she had torn up the hour before. One of them had buried beneath the skin and lay there, black and sharp and malignant. "No," she said. "Oh, no."

"Come on, _solnishko_. If I have to see the sky, then so do you. I'm not going alone."

Zhivka took the glass, and, after a long pause, raised it to her lips to test her tongue against it. It was sweeter than she had expected, piercingly sweet, like tasting a love song. Where traces of the liquid touched her skin, it stained, red and pink. Pomegranate wine. She remembered brewing it, although she could not say how long ago. Time didn't seem to have any meaning down here, beneath the earth, where dwelt the dead. "No," she agreed. "What if you needed someone to do your hair?"

"Or pour me wine."

"Or pick you flowers."

"You really are invaluable, aren't you, Zhitiye?"

"I like to think so."

She lifted the pitcher with an arched eyebrow, but the tsar shook his head, so she recorked it and set it back on the table. Viktor took the glass from her to take a sip, and she relinquished it easily. His skin was not warm. She found that few things down here ever were.

"All this talk of marriage," she said. "It's coming, then."

"It's inevitable," the tsar said, folding his arms and leaning against the table. "Unfortunately."

"And I thought the Selection would come to you as a relief. Another beating heart to keep your own company."

They traded once more, the wine glass for the paring knife. He tested the blade against his thumb almost thoughtfully, and whittled the stem of the nettle leaf into a point which would fit in a lapel as she accepted the drink.

"It's a formality," he said. "A king requires a queen."

"Ereshkirgal," she said. "Kore. Mictecacihuatl. Morevna."

He spoke over the crystal rim of the glass, his lips stained crimson. "You've been reading."

"I'm dead." Her voice was blunt. "There's little else to waste time on."

"You'll be glad of a break, then," Viktor said, and this time when he offered her the glass of wine she took it and drained it, shaking her head and observing him dourly.

"Zagreus will be there, I suppose." Zhivka said, mutinous, her dark eyes humourless. "And Zavgorodniy." Where the Tsar of Life went, his bodyguard was not far behind. And the _vědma_ tended to preside over any instant in which one tsar came face to face with another, where death met life. Zhivka Lazarova was fond of neither and suspicious of both.

"Don't forget, Zhitiye." Viktor plucked a withered hawthorn blossom from the thorny slip in the vase and put it behind the dead girl's ear. "You're dead. They can't hurt you now."

* * *

 **The SYOC is _still open_!**

 **I am not operating on a first-come, first-serve basis, but choosing the best characters which suit the story, so if I have yet to get back to you, it is because I am still considering them. The only character I have accepted thus far is _Zhivka Lazarova_ , who we were introduced to in this chapter!**

 **Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed and PMed me, I'm so glad to see that people like the idea for my story! I can't wait to see what you all thought of this one.**


	3. Chapter 3

Zagreus asked for little. In myth, there always seemed to exist a tithe to cross the river, to delve beneath the ice, to descend into the underworld - some bribe to be paid, some price to be bartered. And yet, for Zagreus, all the journey demanded was her patience and time. It was an easy descent into hell; clawing your way back out again, now, that was where it grew difficult.

Zagreus asked for little, though Gavril tended to ask a great deal. She was messenger and psychopomp, something between plenipotentiary and envoy, because although she rallied between one Tsardom and the next she was unable to do anything but speak the words of one prince or another. And the princes were so often on the quarrelsome edge of war.

Zagreus asked for little, but Zagreus did ask, and today all that she asked for was peace - peace for as long as the two tsars had to dwell together in the same shadow. To meet in one world or the other was forbidden; instead, Gavril and Viktor met in those places where death and life met and mingled - in hospital corridors and on the edge of worn battlefields and within the walls of necropoleis. Today, Zagreus descended into the catacombs of the city, her shadow stretching long in front of her along the walls of the subway tunnel through which she travelled.

Gavril was waiting in one of the abandoned metro stations, sitting on one of the ornately wrought benches with his hair dishevelled and his hoody full of holes.

"Good morning, Your Imperial Highness," Zagreus said. Her voice was soft, very soft, too soft. "I am sorry to intrude."

"No intrusion."

"He's late."

"Isn't he usually?"

That was true, so Zagreus said nothing as she clambered from the rails onto the asphalt of the platform floor and watched what little light leaked into the room play against the gold and silver of the walls. How beautiful these stations were, and how pointlessly so. So many things in the Tsardom were like this: gorgeous and buried deep beneath the ground and forgotten. The stairs leading to the sky had been bricked up long ago, but a little of the wood had rotted allowing a small amount of starlight to illuminate the space; Ksenija stood at the top of the stairs with her arms crossed and a knife glinting with veiled menace at her hip.

Above them, sky; below them, bones. Zagreus put her arms around herself at the phantom cold that threatened to leech her breath and set her gaze stonily on the darkness of the tunnel burrowing into the ground, knowing that Gavril's brother was approaching. No doubt the tsesarevich could detect his counterpart's arrival similarly - he sat up and straightened his collar as though nervous.

A light flared into existence at the threshold of the tunnel, like a firefly at dusk, and Zagreus made out the carved-sharp shape of Viktor, dressed like a corpse: a fine black waistcoat, a fine white shirt, fine black shoes, with his hair slicked back and the pallor of the dead. He did not smile, but walked from the shadows without delay as Gavril rose from his seat, and observed closely.

The girl carrying the light drifted behind him slowly, without expression. Could you call that a girl? Zagreus thought so, until she turned her head to murmur something to her master and the witch saw the rotting skin at her jawline, the blackened flesh at her temple, the brittle curl of her brown hair and the stain spreading across her eyelid, a bruise in birth. Her bones, very close to the surface, were as brittle as a bird's, and Viktor helped her from the tunnel tracks with a gloved hand before ascending himself.

"Handmaiden," Gavril said, and the dead girl folded her hands over the light in her hands - a rose, Zagreus saw now, all its line aglow with fire as though cursed. Magic.

"Tsesarevich." Her voice was hoarse, scratchy, unpleasant, and she stepped around the puddles of starlight in favour of the shade, her eyelashes slowly turning grey over her left eye.

"How goes hell?"

Her voice was soft, and there was callous cruelty in that softness. "Inescapable," she said simply, and the pale corner of her eye twitched with gallow mirth as though considering a smile.

Zagreus held her breath as a silence erupted between them, sudden and awful, broken only by the staccato of Viktor's footsteps towards them, as Gavril's lip curled.

"Cruel humour," the tsesarevich said finally. "Wasn't it, naming you _Zhivka_ when your parents knew that you were mortal and could bleed with the best of them."

"What name would have suited better?"

"Gruoch," he said, after a moment.

Zhivka's expression did not change. "You think me Lady Macbeth?"

"I certainly do not," he said. "Mistake you for a lady."

Her dark eyes were humourless. "Cruel humour," the dead girl said. "Wasn't it, naming her _Anastasia_ , when her parents knew that when she was lost, she was lost, and that hell never released its grip on anyone."

Gavril's eyes flashed with something utterly unspeakable, but before he could reply, Viktor had moved between his handmaiden and his brother, placing a soothing hand on the shoulder of the former and glancing at the latter with a benign kind of weariness.

"Let us be at peace," he said, his voice persuasive.

"Leave us," Gavri told the dead girl, but Zhivka did not move until Viktor caught her eye and nodded sharply. She walked to the edge of the platform and sat down there, suddenly becoming rather small and diminished against the reductive glamour of the gilded station.

"I know your game," the Tsar of Life said, watching the handmaiden with a slight chuckle. "And I must say, you could have chosen worse."

Viktor seemed determined to feign ignorance as his brother spoke, raising an eyebrow only and greeting Zagreus with a slight incline of his head as she came to stand between them, the broker as always between life and death.

"The king of the dead must marry a living queen," Gavril said thoughtfully. "The king of life holds no such restrictions."

"She's a nice girl."

"Yes." The tsesarevich's voice was dry. "I hear hell is full of them."

Viktor put a hand to his hair as though to slick it back but could find no stray hairs to correct and returned it to his pocket, rings glinting. "Does it do harm to make introductions?"

"To me? Not at all. To her? Look at her. She wouldn't last a day above the ground."

Viktor did not look at her, but Zagreus knew from his expression that he was well aware of the slow atrophy his handmaiden was experiencing. The spreading bruise had reached one high cheekbone now, staining it green and purple as though she were transmutating into a snake. Her eyes were laced with the red of broken blood vessels.

"It can't be too pleasant for you, either," Gavril added thoughtfully after a moment, and although Viktor shrugged casually, the shadows under his eyes and the pallor of his skin spoke the truth. "So, to business. You are aware, I'm sure..."

"The fire or the flood? Yes." Viktor's eyes darkened. "My kingdom is full of drowned men, and burned children. Two hundred in all, am I correct?"

The brothers looked to Zagreus, who nodded silently in assent. The orphanage in Abovyan had blazed for hours before the inferno had been doused, and no child had come safe from within. An electrical fault, they said. No one's fault. The shipwreck, that had been someone's fault, and that someone had died along with the rest of the crew and all of the passengers as their vessel charted a path between Baku and Aktau in the dead of night. Two hundred dead before midnight. They had not been mentioned on the Report that evening.

"I have cells full of sinners, damned men, forsaken souls. Murderers and arsonists and rapists all, fifty in number. Surely that is a fair trade for the lives of the children."

"You would think so," Viktor said. "It is enough for thirty."

Gavril shook his head but his brother spoke over him.

"Balance in all things. You think I should favour you, because you favour life. But that is not my domain."

"Fifty," Gavril said. "I want all fifty of those children returned. Safe. Alive."

"I will allow forty," Viktor said measuredly, as Zagreus had always known he would, but Gavril was stubborn when it came to such matters and although he knew it would only anger his brother he continued heedlessly.

"Forty five. The babies - they cannot be worth much, unformed souls that they are. You know that whatever you allow me shall return to your tsardom eventually, brother."

"It isn't as simple as that," Viktor said, and Zagreus believed him.

"It is nearly dawn," she reminded them.

Those were the rules - you had from dusk until dawn to bargain, to try and win back souls, to win back your loved ones for a few more years, a few more decades, a few more hours. After that, they were lost forever to the underworld. Zagreus looked at the dead handmaiden and wondered how she felt to know that no one had bothered to bargain her back from the darkness when she was lost there.

"Forty one," Gavril said finally, the words torn from him reluctantly. "It is a good, odd number."

"Forty one," Viktor agreed, and they shook hands on the matter.

(and at that moment a burning beam broke and collapsed and in a shower of sparks exposed the basement of the orphanage where huddled forty-one dirty, scared children, clinging to one another and coughing smoke and they were carried away burned and unhappy but alive, alive, alive)

On the matter of the sailors there was no easy compromise to be had. Gavril, as always, demanded the lot - Viktor, as expected, offered only the bare minimum. Finally, they settled on the matter of fifty even - "Fifty one," Gavril said, "it is a good, odd number" - and shook hands on that matter also.

(and at that moment a dead man surfaced from the water in the Caspian Sea, gasping for air, his skin bruised and battered, and he was followed by fifty others, men and women and children, drenched to the skin and terrified and cold but alive, alive, alive)

And Gavril signaled to Ksenija that they would soon be leaving. Zhivka likewise rose from her seat and pulled the ruffled fire-flower from her pocket.

"Well," the tsesarevich told his brother. "Until next time."

"Fourteen."

Gavril blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Fourteen," Viktor repeated. "It is a good number. Even."

Of course. The Selection. Zagreus had forgotten, though it seemed that Gavril had not - had only wished to pretend he had.

"So few? An odd number, a large number, is luckier, more traditional. You'll have more choice."

"I won't have any choice," the tsar of the dead corrected him mildly. "I leave that to your capable hands, _brat."_

A pause, and Gavril inclined his head in acquiescence. "Very well. Fourteen girls. Is that your only preference?"

"Of course."

To say otherwise would be an insult, would imply Gavril was not capable of performing this task alone and without instructions, would insinuate the brothers were strangers to one another. And even if it was the truth, Zagreus thought, it had to go unsaid.

"I'll be in touch," Viktor said, and turned, and walked away, without another word. Zagreus watched him go. Zhivka flashed Gavril one final, dead-faced look, one eye obscured by cataracts, one side of her face giving way to wasted flesh and bone, and then followed her master beneath the ground.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Ksenija murmured, nearly making Gavril jump, for a moment forgetting that they were no longer children and no longer friends as she leaned over her crown prince's shoulder to keep an eye on the retreating backs of Viktor and his handmaiden.

Gavril's voice was droll as he handed Zagreus her small cotton bag of gold coins. "She's brunette?"

Ksenija's eyelashes fluttered in a wink. "Should have put money on it."

* * *

 **Sorry for the brief delay in chapters - Christmas and the New Year kind of took over my life for a little while. I wanted to use this chapter to give a bit more world building as well as a look at the five 'court' characters through whose eyes we will see the Selection from one side - Gavril and Viktor, the royals; Zhivka and Ksenija, the servants; and Zagreus, the outsider.**

 **The Selected girls, of course, will see the Selection from another angle, as contestants. Speaking of which, the Selection is still open and accepting characters! You can find the pinterest for this story here: / hereliethorns. I will only be choosing fourteen girls so that all of them will get more attention and time to change. Although Zhivka was submitted by a reader, she will not be in the Selection.**

 **Next, many people have said they are having difficulty understanding some of the Russian words so here is a quick explanation of some of them. If you are still uncertain, please PM me!**

 _Tsesarevich_ \- the crown prince, next in line for the throne. Although Gavril's parents are dead, he has not yet been crowned as Tsar. On the other hand, Viktor is already Tsar of the Dead.

 _Ksyusha_ \- this is a nickname for Ksenija, like "Kat" for Katherine.

 _Gavrik_ \- this is a nickname for Gavril, like "Fred" for "Fredrick".

 _Vitya_ \- this is a nickname for Viktor.

 _Zhitiye_ \- this is a nickname for Zhivka.

V _ědma -_ a witch.

 _Dorogaya -_ sweetheart, an affectionate term.

 _Solnishko -_ sunshine, an affectionate term.

 _Gruoch_ \- the name of Macbeth's wife in Scottish myth.

 **Also, the meaning of the name "Anastasia" is resurrection and the meaning of the name "Zhivka" is life, which is what Gavril and Zhivka talk about.**

 **Finally, thank you all so much for your lovely reviews and support. The reviews are what keep me going, to be honest, the longer and more detailed the better - I really want to hear what you think of the characters, the world, what will happen next! Thank you all so much!**


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